Trust The Cairns (Part 4 of 6)

Greg Harrell and I had stumbled upon the old Porters Creek manway and were following this old, unmaintained path up toward Dry Sluice Gap on the main crest. This path was littered with blowdowns, rhododendron branches, and river crossings. It made for an interesting trip.

There was one other neat feature of this manway – one way in which it is maintained. There were frequent rock cairns to show where the trail was because it wasn’t always obvious. These rock cairns are small, simple piles of rocks placed at strategic intervals along the path. And the word “strategic” really is appropriate here. They aren’t every 30 feet. They aren’t even at every turn in the trial. They are only and exactly where they need to be – no more and no less. In other words, in places where the trail is obvious and well-defined, there are no cairns. But whenever you’d suddenly realize that you weren’t sure where the trail went next, just look around, there will be a small cairn sitting somewhere ahead of you to show the way.

I love these little piles of rock. Yes, partly because of the security that they provide to the bewildered hiker, but mainly because they are a spontaneous act by people you’ve never met; yet they were willing to expend a little energy to help other, future kindred spirits. It’s like someone in the past thought about me and decided that if I was interested enough in this hike to get out here and try it, then they were willing to share their secret with me. Without getting too mystical here, I’ll just say that those little piles of rock are like a connection with the past, like the passing of a torch. Most of these cairns were standing intact, but occasionally one would have tipped over, and we’d stop and repair it. It was our small contribution to future hikers. Some day someone will be writing or thinking the same thoughts that I’m expressing right now – and they’ll be thinking about Harvey Broome and the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club and the many anonymous hikers who aided in “maintaining” this old trail, two of whom would be Greg and me.

I wouldn’t call these cairns altars, but I would call them monuments. They are messages from the past to the future, saying, “Thanks for coming. Follow us. You can trust us.” As a matter of fact, after an hour of hiking and wandering, Greg and I developed an adage that we’d repeat to each other whenever we’d have a decision to make: “Trust the cairns.” That’s it. Simple. Direct. True. For the entire day, if we drifted away from the cairns because we thought we saw a better route, we’d quickly learn that we had made a mistake. If we followed the cairns, things would be fine. We were putting our trust in past generations of hikers, and they were worthy of our trust. Their words, as shown in the placement of these little piles of rock, were true.

The Mother Cairn

And I’m especially pleased that no punks and thugs have come along and knocked them down. This just isn’t the kind of place where you’ll encounter folks like that. These little rock messages from the past remained intact, threatened only by natural elements such as wind and water. As we walked, I wondered how many years these small signposts had been in place, with the same rocks being reused whenever a pile fell over. It’s very possible that these cairns have been in place for decades. Many decades.

There’s another potential threat to these cairns that hasn’t materialized – the Federal government. Again and again over the years I have been reminded – usually in the form of a helpful NPS employee – that the National Park Service is an outpost of sanity and compassion in a governmental world of insanity and hubris. If the NPS were the typical government agency, it might sweep through this area knocking down and scattering these rock cairns in a vulgar display of authority: “We said unmaintained, and we mean unmaintained!” That hasn’t happened yet. Although I have little faith in governments to do the right thing, in this case I can sleep at night, confident that the bureaucrats haven’t won yet.

So we spent the rest of the day trusting the cairns. [To be continued]